NGP Games to Get Simultaneous Digital Releases

Sony learned quite a few lessons from the PlayStation Portable. With the NGP, it will be avoiding one of the major pitfalls of the PSP Go by promising day-and-date releases for all retail games on the PlayStation Network.

When Sony released the Go, a system with no physical media support that relied entirely on the PlayStation Store for its content, it seemed like a safe assumption that all PSP games would start being released simultaneously at retail and on PSN. When that didn't happen, it became a major issue for the people who had paid a premium for a system that was suddenly unable to play the same games as cheaper models of the PSP.

"One thing we learnt from PSP, is that we want to have simultaneous delivery in digital and physical for NGP," Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Andrew House told MCV. "Just to clarify that, all games that appear physically will be made available digitally. Not necessarily all games have to be made available physically. And having the option of a digital-only method affords more creative risk-taking, and that's because you don't-have that in-built risk of physical inventory."

The PSP also showed Sony that it couldn't get away with applying a home console mentality to a portable game system. "With PSP we went on the assumption that if we took a successful home console game experience and applied it wholesale to a portable device, that that was a great route to success," he explained. "What we learnt in the course of the PSP is that consumers want a different experience. Even if it is the same franchise. That was a huge piece of learning that really informed the design of NGP. Take the best of the console experience but give people something that is different that they can only get with that device, on-the-go."

The NGP does not yet have a price or release date, although it was recently rumored that it will cost $250 and $350 for the Wi-Fi-only and 3G-capable models, respectively.

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